


Returned

by Diaph



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 307 fix, Canon Compliant, Caretaking, Clexa, Commander Lexa, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Lexa Lives, Protective Lexa, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2019-08-28 16:53:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16727259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diaph/pseuds/Diaph
Summary: Prompt: Clarke returns to Lexa after being tortured by Azgeda. They deal with the aftermath of that trauma.AKAClarke returns back to Lexa after being convinced that she witnessed her beloved Commander die in her arms. The Heda does her best to right those wrongs.





	1. Chapter 1

It was the absence of being needed that awoke her. The coolness of the blankets. The lack of persistent fingers dragging along her spine. The fidgeting that signalled the beginnings of a nightmare. The tiny whines that followed a troubling furrow of the brow. Lexa awoke from the unusual peacefulness with lurches for air, as if she had been held under water for the duration of her sleep. The bed beside her was empty, the pillows and blankets barely touched. The room was still and quiet, save for the stilting breath from her own thrumming chest. Clarke was nowhere to be found by the quick scan of her eyes.

There is no time for boots and her long coat, no time for the instruments of her station because to be the heda in these moments is to be the thing that Clarke fears the most. Instead, her bare feet thump the entire way to the still half-open door of her quarters, her flimsy thin dressing robe pulled tightly around her to preserve a slither of modesty. 

By the time she jerks the door to the corridor open, an attendant is already waiting on the other side. It stalls him. The fist that intended on knocking on her door comes back down to his hip and his eyes follow suit, embarrassed by the sight of his commander in such a state of undress. Lexa simply looked him up and down, waiting for the news.

“We found her in the guest quarters, Heda. Please, you must come quickly.”

…

“You died in this room,” Clarke whispered as the door creaked open.

“Leave us,” Lexa told the attendants who inched closer to the hunched body sat on the rickety balcony railing.

They did as instructed, reluctantly so. Some of the men had served alongside the great Wanheda in the battle for Wonkru in the days before Azgeda captured her. Lexa watched them hesitate, watched them become equally desperate to save Clarke from a hell of her own worst fears. Eventually, they trickled out of the room until only the two of them remained.

It sickened Lexa. The sight of Clarke balancing on the railing, the sight of her legs dangling and kicking the air softly, the fear that she might topple over any given second. It filled her with memories of Costia that became so thick and overwhelming that Lexa was already mentally preparing herself to light another funeral pyre if it should have to come to that.

She prayed to god it wouldn’t.

“I’m here, Clarke,” Lexa whispered dumbly. “You don’t have to afraid.”

“I’m not here,” Clarke replied instantly with a thin bitter laugh that craned her head forward. Slowly, Lexa listened to it turn into a small sob. “I’m not here, Lexa.” She struggled with pain in her voice.

The commander nudged forward with tentative steps. She judged the distance between the pair of them, how many paces it would precisely take to rush forward and pull her off of the ledge. The realisation came reluctantly that there was too much space between them to solve this problem with her hands, to fix it with strength and bone. Instead all she could do was stand there, trembling, made to be painfully useless.

“They couldn’t break you from the outside.” Lexa’s eyes slipped along the jagged pink scar along the side of her head, then the deep pitted divots of her back where the lashes struck again and again. “They broke into your mind, Clarke. They filled it with untruths and terrible lies,  _ awful terrible lies _ .”

Truth be told, when news reached Lexa that Wanheda had been taken, she was certain that Clarke hadn’t been killed. Her advisors told her contrary, had tried to make their leader understand for days on end that Azgeda wouldn’t keep Clarke alive for long. But then the news came that the Ice Queen had Clarke prisoner and Lexa was made to realise it was a fate worse than death. To be the Commander was to bare the impossible burden that no woman, not even Clarke, could be important enough to negotiate politics on the basis of.

And so for five months, Lexa was forced to be useless by the very thing that gave her power. The letters came from Azgeda, sometimes with locks of Clarke’s hair, promising that she would be released back to the Commander if she conceded to their demands. The letters were burned. Tears were shed. And Lexa suffered. She suffered so deeply in the knowledge that she could not been seen to put her consort above the needs of the world that bowed to her authority.

Then one day, Clarke came back. She just showed up out of thin air, bloodied and stumbling and dragging herself towards the gates of Polis. The healers tried to warn the Heda that Clarke wasn’t herself anymore, that Azgeda had tortured her mind, but Lexa refused to hear of it… right up until her dear Wanheda tried to launch herself out of that small rickety bed, convinced that she was staring at a ghost.

It was then Lexa was made to realise what suffering was. Her soft and gentle Wanheda had been convinced that the Commander had died in her arms. And no matter how hard she tried to convince Clarke it wasn’t the truth, it was as if she were stuck in the nightmare, still.

Clarke rolled her head to the side and peered at her with that look of disbelief in her eyes, as if she didn’t believe Lexa was more than a ghost.

“You died… and I.” Clarke wavered and shimmied forward on the railing. Lexa dared to take two more steps towards her. “I tried to save you but I couldn’t,” Clarke sighed bitterly and began to cry. “I couldn’t make the blood stop. There was just so much of it. I remember the days afterwards. I couldn’t get your blood from underneath my nails…” her voice trailed to a whisper as she raised a hand to examine it closer.

The horrifying thought made Lexa clench her eyes closed. The violent efforts of her lungs thrashed until breathing became a short sharp effort, until each small flare of her nostrils became all the more useless. Still, she refused to slip, refused to let go of the attempt to exert control over herself.

“Things will become clearer if you give them time,” Lexa offered calmly. “I am here, Clarke. I’m alive. I was the one who couldn’t save you… and for that, I’ll never forgive myself.” She hung her head at the realisation.

“Titus thinks I didn’t escape.” Clarke swallowed a gulp, “I heard what he said to you after the meeting… he thinks I switched allegiance to Azgeda… and I am terrified that he is right. I’m terrified that I’m going to kill you.”

“Titus is wrong, Clarke!” Lexa burst with panic.

“And if he’s not? If they did send me back to hurt you?” Clarke shot her a distraught look.

“Those worries belong to tomorrow,” Lexa said softly, trying to make Clarke see reason. “Come back to me now, Clarke, let’s go to bed. Sleep will do you well. We will survive this too, my love. It’s what we do,” the commander hushed and reached out her arms.

“I couldn’t live with myself if I ever hurt you, Lexa.”

“Clarke, I need you to come off the balcony, please? We will survive this too, I swear it to you—” Lexa’s lungs stilted with panic.

There’s a resolute sigh that pours from Clarke’s chest into the cool breeze, a somber low hang of her head as her body leans forward from the railing. It has Lexa inching closer, has her heart stuck in the thrum of her throat.

“Life is about more than just surviving…”

With all her might Lexa rushed forward, her shoulders straining against their sockets with the weight of her thrust. She watches Clarke’s body melt and grow boneless and slack, falling forward over the perilous drop. Lexa’s arms find her waist and snap and lock around it, her shoulders straining and yanking until they become a crumpled pile of limbs on the floor.

“It’s alright, don’t be afraid,” Lexa whispered through a broken rasp, her chest bucked and kicked against as she tightened her arms around the pile on top of her. “Just stay with me.”

“You’re not real!” Clarke screamed it, thumping her chest again and again with furious slaps. “I watched you die a thousand times!” The sob breaks and cracks her voice.

The attendants rushed in and grabbed the thrashing girl on top of the Heda. Lexa watched two of them seal the doors to the balcony, and it was then she could breathe again. The rush of air was almost painful as it hit her raw lungs.

“Lock every window and seal the balcony in my quarters,” Lexa mumbled to an attendant and waved her hand. “Go, quickly.”

Lexa watched a sudden realisation dawn on Clarke. It was then something lifted like a veil that blurred the realities of this world. She watched a flicker of recognition cross her horrified blue eyes. It gave the commander hope.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke ached and curled. “I… I… I didn’t mean… I was confused—”

Lexa pushed forward until her soft hands were cradling each cheek.

“My spirit is not going anywhere, I’m right here with you,” she hushed and soothed.

“I don’t know what’s real anymore,” Clarke’s voice snapped. The breath became jagged and hot against Lexa’s tear-stained palms. “I feel like I’m stuck in a dream that I can’t wake up from.”

“Do you trust me?” Lexa asked softly.

“No,” Clarke replied quietly. It instantly broke the Commander’s heart. “But, I can try to learn how to again… slowly…”

“Let’s go to bed?” Lexa suggested calmly, adding a little nod for good measure. “Sleep will do you well, love. I’ll have the healers bring you something to help you rest? We don’t have to rush anything. We will take our time and make you well.”

Clarke nodded weakly.

Lexa slipped her arms around her. 

“Good girl,” she whispered.

…

The healers came in and then came out. They reassured that Wanheda was now asleep, that she would stay asleep for some days to help the hysteria pass. It did nothing to reassure the commander but she offered them the briefest of thankful nods regardless.

“You cannot keep her underneath your watch all hours of the day, Heda,” Titus warned as he turned back around the candlelit corner, his task of bidding away lurking attendants now complete. “She is weak, and that weakens you.”

Lexa remained outside the door of her quarters, drumming her fingers against the wood lightly. 

“What would you have me do?” She raised a brow in his direction.

“Send her back to Skaikru. Let it be their responsibility to keep her from harming herself, or anyone else for that matter.” He looked her up and down worriedly. It earned a displeased sigh from the commander.

“You are to go and give Prince Roan of Azgeda his last blessings. Please send him my apologies—”

“Heda!” Titus snapped in shock. “I hasten to remind you, Commander, that if you sentence Prince Roan to death you act in your own worst interest. Roan has already agreed to end these wars between our clans when he ascends the throne. One day Queen Nia will die, and he will be the King that kneels to your throne!”

“I know all of that,” Lexa soured and shot him a stern look. “But I am going to send him back to his mother in very small pieces, because I am the Heda and I can. Do you understand me, Titus?” She stepped forward with a furious grind of her jaw. “I want her to hurt and grieve for her child. I want that pain to run so deep within her that she cannot breathe because of it. I want you to send her his eyes first, let her think we’ve kept him alive and stripped him of his flesh bit by bit.”

“Yes Heda,” he bowed his head with a repulsed expression.

“Good. Then goodnight, Fleimkepa,” Lexa said resolute and trudged towards the door.

When she made it back to bed, when her robe was slipped off and the cool sheets knew her body once more, the faintest mumble cut through the silence. It was followed by a furrow of the brow, then a tiny whimper.

“It’s okay, we’re here together,” the commander reassured her into a state of quiet, her arms slipping over her warm pushing belly. “I’m not going anywhere, Clarke.” Lexa sighed and settled. “I will right every wrong that was ever levelled against you.”

  
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	2. Chapter 2

It was the nightmare that woke her. The one where Lexa’s eyes were open and empty, the black blood still warm and sticky between the webs of her fingers. It happened. Clarke knew it. She remembered it. She lived through it. She grieved through it. She saved an entire world with that horrific, never ending grief throttling her every step of the way because that was who she was. That was the burden of being a leader… except apparently she wasn’t a leader anymore. She was a woman out of time, a woman out of her own time.

A hand reached out and touched the palm of her soaking wet spine, startling her to the other side of the bed.

“Oh,” Lexa blurted and flinched backwards. “I didn’t realise you were awake already. You were… crying again.” She swallowed uncomfortably and pulled the blankets up her bare chest. “I thought you were. I thought you might be—” The words didn’t come naturally to the leader of the thirteen, she was the woman who knew how to fix every problem in the world except for the ones she couldn’t see with her own two eyes. “I’m here Clarke,” the commander whispered.

She gently tugged on Clarke’s wrist, because that was all she could do, be here, exist here, make herself a constant presence until Clarke accepted it as fact. Their bodies curled together in a way that was neither warm or familiar, it was silent and mechanical. Lexa held her breath and felt a hand slip over her shoulder and bicep, squeezing, tracing, feeling her just to make sure she was real. She swallowed and allowed these small procedures and examinations, anything in order to help her beloved Wanheda come back to herself.

“I remember the way your lips tasted after you were gone. I don’t—” Clarke sighed and tried to keep her voice measured, filled with worry that anything else would lead to another visit from the healers who forced her to drink medicines and potions that put her to bed for days on end. “I don’t understand how they could make me remember something like that.”

“What do you think is the most reasonable explanation?” Lexa prodded slightly.

Clarke nodded to herself for a moment, thinking, thinking seriously about it because nothing made sense in moments like this right after a nightmare. It was as though reality became a truncated, tiny concept that could be held in the palm of the hand and examined meticulously for fault and flaw, which of course there always were faults and flaws, such was the nature of reality.

“I think maybe I’m in Hell.” The words make the commander flinch uncomfortably. “I’m not entirely convinced either way.”

“Well I would rather a Hell with you than a thousand Heavens without,” Lexa murmured into the roof of her blonde hair.

“Sometimes I’m worried I’m going to shoot you,” Clarke blurted earnestly. “I’m worried they put something in my head, like they made me remember something that hasn’t happened yet but will, that I’m going to hurt you because it’s where we’ve always been going, I’m scared that—”

“Slow down, shh. Slowly.” Lexa dragged her knuckles over her lover’s spine, uncomfortable with discussions about her own possible murder this early in the morning.

“Aren’t you scared too?” The sky girl whispered.

“I’m terrified, Clarke,” Lexa promised.

 

***

 

Titus paced backwards and forwards, a man on the edge of himself, a man dictated by his purpose which was to protect the heda regardless of threat, to protect the heda despite if those threats came from her own hand.

“The people are growing restless.” Titus nodded to the brooding world outside of their tower. “The clans. The villages. There have been uprisings—”

“And we will stifle them,” Lexa said calmly, her back stiffening slightly.

“They call you the gostheda. Do you know that? Do you care?” Titus reminded that it wasn’t just the woman in her living quarters who thought she might be dead too. “The only person who cannot see that Wanheda is no longer who she once was is you, commander.”

“Clarke is coming back to herself.” Lexa folded her thigh over the other and was not prepared to hear any of this. “A few more weeks, she will be well.”

“Never to our people. Never again,” Titus warned with a raised eyebrow and paced harder. “The clans believe she is a revenant, some even think she is death herself. They believe that what she has seen is foreshadowing, they believe you are going to die at her hand and the fact you entertain this girl, still! The fact you keep her in your bed!”

“Watch your tongue,” Lexa warned with a serious stare.

“She is a mad woman who believes she watched you die, commander.” Titus bowed his head submissively. “A woman who needs her nightmares and reality reconciling, and I worry for your life more than I have in any war or battle that has come before.”

“You would have me kill her myself, wouldn’t you?” Lexa drew to the realisation reluctantly. “You would have me put her down like a dog in the night.” The acidic thought made her sneer.

“Sometimes the most painful choices are the only ones we have, commander. You know how I feel, love is—”

“Enough.” Lexa lifted her hand and felt her jaw ache. “That’s enough,” she whispered.

“Fine,” Titus sighed.

 

***

 

It was the slightest creak of wood that awoke her. Lexa blinked and huffed quietly, shifting around and feeling through the warmth of the blankets. She rubbed her eyes and peered over her shoulder when she realised Clarke was missing. That was when she saw the body looming over her, that was when she saw two wild blue eyes staring at her from above.

It was the glint of steel that made the commander move with the instinct of battle, the sharp long piece of metal pulled back inside a clenched, trembling fist. Lexa rolled out of the way but the knife didn’t come down and lodge itself in the place where she had been. Instead Clarke just stood there, trembling, knife in a fist above her head, frozen stiff with repulsion, or maybe just shame of what she had half-planned on doing.

The commander took no chances, she launched herself off the bed and put Clarke on her back with little to no effort, forearms pinning her into the floor as though she were wrestling some sort of beast. Clarke didn’t fight back, not even a little bit, she just laid there limply and accepted it, tears in her eyes as though she knew this was inevitable and necessary.

“Why?” Lexa demanded with a betrayed hiss, a sob almost on the brink of itself although she somehow managed to stifle it.

“You’re not real, Lexa. God...” Clarke wept. “I wish you were more than anything. I would give anything to go back… the pain of this… of having you and not having you…”

Either one of them could have said the words and they still would have been true, Lexa knew that. She refused to take her weight off of her lover’s body, pinned her there as though they were in the midsts of passion, forearm on her windpipe, knee on her gut, keeping her just so while the knife sat less than a foot away, taunting them both.

“They killed you, Clarke.” The commander’s bare shoulders slumped, the weak tears dripping down her cheeks like a river bursting deep within herself. “I have missed you everyday that you have been gone… but that isn’t enough. I wish more than anything it was. I wish I could love you well enough to save us both but. I’m. I’m just not proficient like you were.” 

Lexa knitted her brows together, aware of what she had to do now, aware that it would kill her too all the same. Although if there was one thing Clarke’s rendition of love had taught her it was that there was no weakness about it. Her Clarke, the one she remembered, her love was the fiercest force of all. That Clarke would have understood this burden. That Clarke lived through losing the love of her life a thousand times, and, still, she came back by some miracle, the ghost of what was left at least. If she could do all of that… perhaps Lexa could survive this. At the very least, it was what was owed.

“Do it,” Clarke whispered with sudden clarity. “It’s okay. I love you and this is okay.”

Lexa peered at the knife with a solemn, tearful expression. “This was their plan all along, Clarke. It was never you who was supposed to kill me… this was always their intention.”

Clarke swallowed hard. “Then I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

“Me too,” Lexa hushed.

 

***

 

“You burned her and you never—” Abbey stopped and doubled over, hands wrapped around her stomach as if the realisation was one that stuck her like a knife every time she drew to its conclusion. “I never held my daughter’s hands. I never kissed her goodbye. I never gave her the prayer!”

“I did,” Lexa whispered. “I… I was very gentle. I recited your prayer as she went.” It was a truth that could get her killed because she was the last vestibule of a very narrow religion, one that did not tolerate blasphemy even from the mouth of its own gods, but she had recited the traveller’s prayer and she… she needed them to know that.

“You burned her.” Abbey’s face screwed up again with utter agony.

“She jumped from a balcony,” Lexa lied with a clench of her jaw. “To have given you her remains… it would have been cruel and prolonged. I set her pyre aflame, I gave her the rest she did not get in this world, and I’m sorry for that kindness. I am.”

“She would have been safe if she was with us!” Abbey made her suffer the truth of it. “She would have lived!”

The last part was a lie, and Lexa comforted herself with the private knowledge of it. There was no life for leaders, there was merely the space between one war and the next, and there was comfort to be found in that purpose and usefulness. Clarke wouldn’t have been useful or able to lead, and the constant reminder of that would have killed her far more slowly and painfully. It would have tortured her people too. This was an act of kindness for everyone, it was something that had to happen for the world to heal the paradox of Clarke’s false return.

“We want our sovereignty,” Abbey demanded with a severe expression. “It’s what her people want and unless you want a nuclear war in a battle of sticks and stones—”

“I will grant you your sovereignty,” Lexa interrupted the small meeting of peers and clan leaders. “You and your people are not of this world, to assume that you could be was a mistake that nearly started a war to end all wars. Clarke’s legacy will be one of peace. You will have your sovereignty, trade agreements too, but your people will never again enter the city of Polis or venture past the borders of Trishankru. Those are my terms, accept them or—” Lexa hesitated. “Accept them, Abbey.”

 

***

 

Once a month for the duration of four nights, the commander journeyed alone into the guts of her world to collect her thoughts, sometimes to hunt, whatever it was the officials of Polis needed to hear in order to keep the world ticking over in her necessary absence. It was a trip that she had always taken since her coronation, one that she had ritualistically performed since the age of seventeen. It arose no suspicion. It invited no debate or opposition. Five years since Clarke, her court had learned to become far more tacit with their counsel. She had lost the two great loves of her life, there wasn’t much left in terms of restraint.

The journey took precisely six hours along a route she had travelled so many times it was now muscle memory. From the gates of Polis to the mouth of the river, Lexa rode quietly and removed the accoutrements of her station piece by piece, the cloak, the headpiece, the paint, all of it came off mile by mile. She doubled back around on herself, trotting through the woods and over the lands and clearings when they appeared, always diligent to make sure she was not being tracked or followed.

Her mother and six younger siblings always waited outside of the farm as though they knew down to the precise moment when Lexa would return, as though it could be felt in the air. The older siblings who were married, they lived dotted around the farm and dropped in when work was complete. There was another member of the family now, a woman who slept in Lexa’s old bedroom and took up art for most of her days, sometimes hunted for the rest. She even helped out the healers a few miles away whenever it was needed, life had slowly been coming back to her in pieces. Lexa had it on good authority that she sometimes even managed bedtime stories for the little ones from a time before she fell from the sky and fought wars on the ground. They idolised her, and Lexa did too.

“Aleksa!” The youngest ran out and was promptly scooped into her big sister’s arms. “You were gone longer this time,” she reminded as though all the days since Lexa’s last departure had been tracked and accounted for.

“The world is a very maddening place, Rana.” Lexa smirked. “Have you been practicing your reading? Have you put those books I brought to good use?”

“Clarke tells better stories.” The little girl shrugged as they walked up the path with the war horse trotting softly behind them.

“I remember.”

“She had a nightmare the other night. I told her a story until she felt better, the one from when we all picked berries last Spring and you fell down into the ditch.” The little girl giggled.

“Did it make her feel better?” Lexa already knew the answer as she shouldered her baby sister up the path.

“Mhm.” Rana nodded.

“Maybe you’ll be a healer, like her.”

“Or an ambassador like you.”

“Mhm. That too.” Lexa smirked slightly at the white lie of who she was and what she did in the minds of her little siblings.

“Did you miss Clarke, Aleksa?” Rana smiled.

A body appeared from around the gate and nearly suffocated Lexa with the weight of a hug that enraptured both siblings indiscriminately. “Of course she did,” Clarke whispered and pressed her forehead into her wife’s temple. “How was work, Aleksa?” Clarke pulled away and lifted a brow.

“Over.” Lexa pushed a small grin and took her wife’s hand. “I’m home now, for good this time.” She glanced back at her faithful speckled nose mare who was being led to the stable for a much needed rest.

Lexa empathised.


End file.
